


Fire Bird

by StellaDraco



Series: Legacy of Apollo [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Archangel - Freeform, Awkwardness, Choices, Desperation, Empathy, F/M, Fights, Friendship, Genetically Engineered Beings, Literary References & Allusions, Love Triangles, Love/Hate, Mercenaries, Plague, Rescue, Serious Injuries, Shapeshifting, Telepathy, omega - Freeform, pop culture references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:48:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5683921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaDraco/pseuds/StellaDraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after their first meeting, a situation at Omega leads Garrus to cross paths with Phoenix once again, but it's far from an ideal reunion.<br/>-----------------<br/>Notes: This work is written in first person, but the perspective may (probably will) change from chapter to chapter.  I'm hoping it will be obvious who's who, but I can put in narrator names at the start of each new section, if you want.<br/>Also, I may change the title of this part of the series if I think of something more fitting.<br/>------------------<br/>I don't use archive warnings to avoid spoilers, but this work will probably get very violent, the first chapter has some mild references to sex, and one of the characters tends to swear.  I don't plan to rate it explicit, but if it gets bad enough that you think I should, please let me know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vendetta

Despite the smell, the back-alley scum, and dealing with Aria, life on Omega wasn’t half bad.  I didn’t draw attention and one way or another I could manage to live comfortably, whether I was taking mercenary jobs, selling paintings, or hunting down vorcha like a starving nathak,  For the first time in my life I had enough to eat three meals a day, not that I wasn’t still hungry all the time.  When I wasn’t working, I usually just sat in Afterlife, looking for people who needed a merc or the few travelers who’d buy art.  I did happen upon a few salarians really into my style, I guess somehow all the water I painted reminded them of home.  Hey, credits are credits, if they want to say it’s their home pond, it’s their home pond.  Between the two intermittent jobs, I managed to earn a decent living, not that my beat-to-hell-but-intact heavy armor made that obvious.  I kept my helmet on almost constantly because it was easier than dealing with drunks who wanted to hook up with any girl they saw and in the bulky battered metal with its chipped black paint, I looked like the kind of roving merc nobody wanted to mess with.  Well, almost nobody, but I was surprisingly quick to notice the sort of people I had to avoid and I had yet to run into problems.  

I didn’t run with the big gangs and I didn’t take jobs that might draw unwanted attention. At least I tried not to, I’d gotten suckered in a few times by Eclipse.  Like I said, salarians liked my work, and their boss had money.  I made the mistake of letting slip that I “dabbled” in mercenary work and he’d hired me a few times, the few times he’d been able to talk me into it.  With everything going down lately, I’d been avoiding Afterlife, the only place Jaroth knew I hung out.  He probably assumed I was afraid of Archangel, but really I just preferred not to deal with him.  From what I heard, he was a turian, a guy, and had the balls to not only stand up to but actively antagonize Omega’s three main mercenary gangs, and he was smart enough to get away with it.  The only reason I didn’t get hired more as a mercenary was that I had a reputation for changing sides in the middle of a conflict.  It wasn’t even credits that motivated me, which completely baffled practically everyone I dealt with.  That reputation had me seen as a wild card, a woman hardly anyone would hire unless they were desperate or had never heard of me.  At the very least, I was rarely hired twice.  Jaroth was the exception.  Whatever his cut-throat nature, he was smart, reasonably cultured, and he actually cared about his men more than most.  Granted, his brother was a part of his gang, but there was a reason he preferred mechs in most combat situations.  One of the jobs he’d hired me for had gone bad, very bad, and he’d been genuinely concerned about me until he’d realized I could handle it.  Oh, if he was dealing with his enemies he’d do damn near anything to take them out, and he didn’t give a crap about strangers or addicts, especially when things got personal, but when it came to his own men or even some of the people he chose to hire, he could be almost sweet.  Then again, I had a soft spot for salarians.  Those big eyes, colorful faces, and that brilliantly curious nature, I just wanted to like them.  I’d met some real jerks among the salarian race, but for the most part I liked with them even better than krogan.  Although I did like quite a few races.  My friendly nature just didn’t help me in the mercenary business.  

I didn’t like working with Eclipse and I didn’t like hanging out in Afterlife when I wasn’t looking for money, but when the plague hit the branch of Omega where I lived, I had to go somewhere.  I wasn’t a turian, but I didn’t want to take any chances, I got the hell out of there once it became clear that this wasn’t just some cold going around.  Within a matter of days, it became obvious that this was no ordinary plague; it effected too many different species, that raised suspicion even if I couldn’t figure out why anyone would target specifically Omega with this sort of biological weapon.  I could see why people might want to wipe Omega off the star charts, but surely it would be easier to just bomb it or something rather than going to such great lengths to produce a weapon which killed civilians as readily as criminals.  Hell, this sounded more like some bastard virologist fucked up containment procedures.  I called in an old friend I thought might be able to help.  From the sound of it, he felt like this was more serious than I’d realized and was glad I’d let him know, but he hadn’t left the quarantine since he’d got here and I wasn’t heading in to chat.  

Waiting for the plague to be cured was like waiting for a thick underpainting to dry, and I ended up going to Afterlife because it was the best place on the station to drink and stare at a wall for three hours, wishing I’d thought to bring a data pad to read or something.  

Unbeknownst to me, Jaroth was getting desperate.  

I had my armor with me, but the helmet made drinking a problem, so I’d opted instead for my old trenchcoat, altered over the years and heavily added to with a mix of repairs, a new, softer lining, metal studs, and a dangerously distinct phoenix design stitched and painted onto the back in a style reminiscent of old Earth tattoos.  Jaroth had seen me in both outfits.  

When one of his men approached me, I couldn’t possibly pretend that I had anything better to do and against my better judgement, ten minutes later I was walking into a mercenary camp in full armor.  I knew Jaroth was exceptionally pissed off as soon as I saw him.  

I couldn’t throw crates across the room or give myself psychic armor, but I had some abilities that were almost asari.  I think asari could feel that or something because the ones I’d met made me uncomfortable and the feeling was mutual.  As a result, I wasn’t fond of Aria, not that many people knew that aside from myself and Jaroth.  He’d gotten it out of me one night when we were both particularly drunk.  He wasn’t fond of her either, so we both knew this was less a blackmail opportunity than a double-edged sword.  He wasn’t too fond of asari in general either and that was probably why we were tentatively friends.  I say tentatively because I wasn’t so stupid as to trust him and he, likewise, knew my loyalty was never set in stone.  

My asari-like ability wasn’t the kind of thing I let slip during late nights of card games and drinking.  We didn’t gamble, mostly because we both played just to do something while we drank and he was competitive.  Or friendship relied on the fact that nothing motivated me against him and he found me useful as well as amusing.  There weren’t that many people on Omega who shared a love of art, theatre, and literature.  Obviously, he had other interests, and so did I, but it wasn’t as if he had another person willing to discuss the techniques of ancient drell painters and the works of Shakespeare, so when he felt like chatting about the arts, he had me drop by.  We kept our conversations away from our personal lives as much as possible, but sometimes we slipped up, and hanging out getting drunk, you got to know each other, so I knew he cared about his gang like some kind of deranged family and he knew I felt some level of fondness for his group.  That was also why I thought he might know about my limited telepathy.  

I didn’t like to use this ability more than in passing; I got the sense of whether people were happy, sad, disoriented, or hostile whether I wanted to or not unless they were asari, I only dug into the extent of the emotion or the reasons behind it if I was drunk or I knew and cared about them.  I was often drunk around Jaroth and although I didn’t love the guy, I cared more than I liked to admit.  I knew what he was feeling however well he could hide it and on my drunker nights, I’d pointed it out in an effort to help him.  He had a personal grudge against addicts, a grudge I didn’t want to dig into because the pain I could feel from him was so sharp.  I’d brought it up. He hadn’t asked at the time how I’d known, but I knew he had suspicions.  I knew he poisoned some of the drugs he smuggled, usually nothing too serious, just the kind of stuff that would cause problems from chronic use.  I knew I couldn’t talk him out of it, and I didn’t help him on those jobs.  

As soon as I saw him waiting for me in that camp, pacing in a side room filled with mechs so we could speak alone, I could feel that he had another grudge, a new one, a deeper cut than the former though that might have just been because it was so recent.  I could feel his hatred like broken glass when I touched his mind and I recoiled from it, unwilling to dig deeper.  In person, Jaroth still looked almost calm, completely in control, just twitchy, as most salarians always were.  He had an edge of hate to his demeanor which differed from his usual manner of authority.  He still ran a gang, he had to hide how much he considered his men a family and maintain the level of discipline necessary to keep his position.  He also had to hide how unstable I could tell he had become.  He wasn’t broken, but he’d been so emotionally devastated that he was going to make mistakes; he was desperate.  

The missions I’d been on for him had all involved smuggling illegal mechs and technology.  The first, before we’d formed our fragile friendship, had me escorting a rather pathetic turian bartender off Palaven after he’d overheard a captain taking a bribe to get his crew killed on assignment.  Easy-peasy, with the dubious benefit of having some quality time with that bartender on the long flight to Omega.  Although the mission itself proved my worth to Jaroth, what happened afterwards had added to my deadly and capricious reputation the assumption that I slept with anyone I didn’t openly hate.  As a result, I got into a habit of snarling anything I said in public unless I was speaking to someone I couldn’t afford to piss off.  I wasn’t good at hiding who I hated, so at the very least nobody thought I was having sex with Aria, but this wasn’t a facade I maintained around Jaroth, so, of course, assumptions were made, and because the brutal side of my reputation worked to his advantage, he did nothing to refute these claims.  Okay, I admit, we did actually sleep together once, but only once, and we were so drunk I barely remember it.  I’m pretty sure there were reasons we decided never to do that again, not the least of them being that neither of us knew anything about each other’s anatomy beforehand.  

After that I’d been hired to smuggle a prototype security mech to a scientist on Noveria who’d equip it with a specialized AI and I’d smuggle it out and back to Omega to be passed on to a different branch of Eclipse.  That job was tricky, but I’d managed it. That had impressed Jaroth, who’d figured he’d need another mercenary to get it off Noveria.  The last job had gone bad.  I’d been sent to sneak a krogan fugitive onto Tuchanka.  He was fleeing the Council after they caught him smuggling weapons, he’d hired Eclipse to get him safely home, where he hoped to disappear and assume a new identity.  I slept with him too, because that assumption wasn’t entirely wrong, as much as it pissed me off, but that didn’t mean I liked the guy.  Even as a smarter-than-average krogan, he had less culture than disinfectant.  The thing was, while we were passing the time, I never found out that he’d smuggled those weapons to Blood Pack mercenaries, and proceeded to rat them out when he’d been caught.  We arrived on Tuchanka to a hoard of armed krogan trying to kill us, which happened to me far more often than I would like.  Jaroth figured we’d been killed when he lost contact; he didn’t find out until I called him that we’d survived.  I wiped out the force attacking us, which turned out to be every member of the Blood Pack that was on Tuchanka at the time. They just sent everyone they had to kill us through the course of the four-day battle.  I’d also managed to save three of the men who’d come with us, one of whom was Jaroth’s brother, Kajor, who’d been in charge of the mission.  At the time, I’d mostly been hired in case they ran into trouble because he knew I got along with krogan; saving his brother’s life and the awed report his brother gave about my combat skills completely solidified my reputation with Jaroth.  

That was why I wasn’t surprised when he looked at me the way an unarmed man staring down a lion looks at an assault rifle.  Whatever was going on here, he didn’t contact me for a chat.  

“Kajor is dead.” Jaroth explained.  He was still keeping his emotions as hidden as possible, but he damn near snarled the words.  

I nodded, hoping he knew me well enough to see that I wasn’t being dismissive.  “And we’re after whoever’s responsible?”  We were surrounded by mechs and he had a pistol holstered at his side; I wasn’t going into combat alone.  

“Yes.”  He gestured towards the long corridor outside, in the opposite direction of the shuttle that had brought me here.  “He’s cornered and we have an infiltration team, but they’re pinned down.  We haven’t been able to distract him long enough for them to take him down.  They have explosives, if it comes to that.  The Blood Pack’s trying to get through tunnels into his base as well and Tarak’s got a gunship, if he can get it back up and running.”

“Tarak?  The Blue Suns and the Blood Pack?  Who is this we’re going after?”

The salarian gave the longest pause I’d ever seen while he was sober.  “ _Archangel_.  Haven’t you heard?”

“Sorry.  There’s a plague I’ve been dealing with.  I did hear he was fucking with mercs, but if you three are working together he must have been doing more than I realized.  Bastard.”  I wasn’t surprised they’d gone after him.  I _was_ surprised that the three gangs had joined forces and also that they’d managed to corner him.  I must have overestimated the vigilante hero; I’d been thinking I’d just settle down as a painter at least until he killed or drove off the other mercs.  I wasn’t crazy about the way things were here, if it weren’t for the fact that my only friend was Jaroth, I might have gone looking to team up with Archangel already.  I was more surprised that Jaroth didn’t see right through my pretense of hating the mysterious turian.  

He almost laughed, but it was a grim laugh.  “Phoenix, you’re oblivious.  Archangel has been making mercenary life a pain in the ass around here, I don’t care if you’ve had some recent surge of inspiration or cleaned some idiot out over the card table, help me with this.”

He was desperate.  I could feel it as much as I didn’t want to.  He wasn’t begging, he’d never beg, but that was irrelevant because I could feel how much he felt he needed my help.  I don’t know if I could help him.  Feeling his need made me sympathize, but I agreed, for the most part, with Archangel’s goals, and meeting him I knew I’d feel his mind.  Unless he was more of a jerk than his actions suggested, I wouldn’t be able to kill him.  

Jaroth blinked and I realized that he’d been standing more perfectly still than I’d ever seen him.  He hadn’t expected me to hesitate.  He knew I didn’t fear death, he probably thought I didn’t fear anything, he had expected me to dive into this fight the way I normally sought out combat and when I didn’t, it left him completely at a loss.  I was his last resort, or possibly the only desperate measure he had short of charging in himself, which he wasn’t far from doing.  From what I’d heard, Archangel was a turian sniper.  Jaroth wouldn’t stand a chance.  

“Fine.  Where is he?”

I was actively probing his mind now; I needed a read on him to see if there was any possible way I could talk him down.  If I had to, I could let Archangel die, so long as I didn’t kill him myself, and it sounded like I probably wouldn’t have to, but even if Archangel died, Jaroth wasn’t thinking clearly.  He’d throw everything he had at the vigilante and even if Archangel went down easily, Eclipse would be devastated.  I was no fan of Eclipse, but I didn’t expect Jaroth to survive if it became known that he’d lost most of his power, and I couldn’t live as his bodyguard without being dragged into his schemes.  This was most of the reason I’d stopped dealing with batarian slavers.  If I could talk him down, whether or not Archangel survived, I might be able to get him out of here, hopefully get him whatever help he needed to stop obsessing over his brother’s murder and maybe even clear up his grudge against addicts.  I almost wanted to imagine that I could turn him into a decently honorable man, but that was never going to happen, he was too far gone.  But Jaroth was still my only friend who lived on Omega, one of my only friends in the universe.  He could be one ruthless son of a bitch sometimes, but if there was any chance I had to reason with him, I had to try.  

I felt relief, a huge rush of relief and something almost like hope.  And worry.  He had faith that I could kill Archangel, or more ideally subdue him so he could take direct revenge, but because of my hesitation and obvious reluctance, he worried if I was going to.  He didn’t trust easily.  I knew, browsing his emotions, that he trusted me almost as much as he had trusted his brother.  There was nothing romantic between us, even the sex had just been a way to explore our curiosities and pass the time, but we were closer friends than either of us had elsewhere.  We were both too wary to trust each other with our lives, but we got close to that, and I could feel that he felt a bit betrayed that I had even hesitated in supporting him.  I don’t know why I hadn’t realized how much he trusted me.  I wasn’t looking forward to disappointing him but I knew that one way or another I was going to.  

He wasn’t going to back down.  I could feel it, the fanatical insistence that he could not rest until his brother’s murderer was dead.  If he had to die to bring down Archangel, he was prepared to do so.  I guess, in a way, I was glad he accepted that possibility, because I was no longer sure that I could prevent it.  

He’d given me directions while I’d read his mind and all I heard from him was the end of his orders, “—You’ll go in with the idiot freelancers Tarak’s been hiring, hopefully they’ll draw some fire.  Phoenix,” he paused for the barest fraction of a second, he wanted to appeal to me as a friend because he knew that was how to keep me on his side but his instincts told him to stay impersonal, “ _please_ bring him down.”  Jaroth spoke the last three words separately, emphasizing them as if each one was a physical punch to Archangel.  That was closer to a plea than I had ever expected to hear from him under any circumstances.  

I jerked my head forward in something that might have been a nod, unable to bring myself to answer.  

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I apologize if the conversation in the first part is too much of a recap to the comics, there didn't seem to be a better way of having the conversation with his father and having it chance when he doesn't see Shepard among the mercs, so I pretty much took his father's dialogue from the Homeworld comics and had it change at the end, but I hope it's different enough by having his thoughts and some stuff about the mercs in between. 
> 
> Also, yes, this chapter is WAY longer than I expected. Sorry.

Omega was never pleasant.  The second floor of my base even managed to be cold right now, I guess one of the mercs must have messed with the climate controls, but it seemed fitting.  

“Hello?”  It had been years since I’d heard that voice and hearing it again really made the finality of my situation sink in.  

“Dad.”

Sheer surprise gave him pause.  “ _Garrus_?”  Of course he was shocked, I’d expected that.  It took something this serious to get me to talk to him again.  “Is that you?  What’s that noise?”

This wave of freelancers didn’t get very far.  “Just a little target practice.”

“Then call me back later.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.”  I sniped a batarian on the barricade and watched a new wave of freelancers arrive, keeping low so I couldn’t get a clear shot.  “Too many targets.”

He took a while to respond.  “...I see.”

“I just wanted to hear your voice.  Wanted to know how retirement was treating you.  You good?”

He wasn’t having it.  Just like the old man to never give up.  “I’m fine.  Forget about that.”

I ducked behind the wall as another assault of bullets beat a chaotic rhythm on the metal around me.  “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time.  I wanted to say...you were right about things.  A lot more than I gave you credit for.  And I’m sorry we butted heads so much.”  

“I said forget about that.”  He still couldn’t accept that this was the end.  I couldn’t help but smile.  Stubborn bastard.  “These targets you’re practicing on, they’re moving fast?”

“So far, not fast enough.”  I paused to pick off a few more men.  “But they’re learning.”

“How are your thermal clips?”

I did a quick count.  I was pretty sure my estimate remained correct, but it never hurt to double-check.  Twelve clips.  I’d started with over a hundred.  “You know how it is.  Could always use a couple more.”

“Work with what you’ve got, then.  You don’t stop pulling that trigger until it clicks, son.”  

Another wave of freelancers, another three clips to take them down.  This couldn’t go on too much longer.  It didn’t help that after three days I could feel the lack of sleep taking a toll on my reflexes.  

“No matter how bad things are falling apart around you, as long as you have at least one bullet left, you can still get the job done, understand?”  I wanted to believe him.  A different part of me wanted to refute him, but I didn’t have the heart to do so.  

So far the freelancers had been mostly humans in mass-produced armor.  There’d been one guy who looked like he’d made his armor himself, but it had the mismatched appearance of salvage and it had done so little to protect him that he’d barely made it over the barricade.  A new wave of freelancers had already started massing near the bridge— the mercs must have been paying more as they got more desperate.  I hadn’t seen any notable individuals among the freelancers until now, now when I was starting to hope for a miracle I didn’t expect to find.  This felt more like I’d run into the freight train at the end of the line.  

I’d heard humans talk about death as a being, a “grim reaper.”  I’d always pictured that as some kind of human-sized version of Sovereign, only more intimidating, even though the depictions I’d seen showed this figure as a skeletal human in a black cloak.  This mercenary seemed to spell my doom just as certainly.  This situation had brought me to my end, all my fault, really, but this merc was the force that would end it, I just knew that.  Having stared down the mercenary gangs for days now, none of them had yet managed to get through to me, but this man was going to.  

His armor was clearly custom made, probably by his own hands.  It was black steel in bulky sheets with no visor or eye holes in the helmet, just a flat slope of metal across his face.  The plates overlapped at the joints, each so massive they seemed to be hull-plating salvaged from dreadnoughts.  The armor didn’t make for easy movement— I was amazed that anyone could move at all while wearing that much metal, but I also didn’t expect even my best tungsten rounds to make a dent in that suit.  Beyond the defensive prowess, the lack of a visor or any anatomical landmarks gave the merc a mechanical quality.  Whether he’d done it intentionally or just by accident, this and the mix of sharp angles and scythe-like arcs to the armor’s design gave the mercenary an unnaturally intimidating appearance, like some force of nature, unfeeling and impossible to stop.  

In all that armor, the newcomer stood over seven feet tall and I guessed he was krogan just because no other race seemed likely to have the strength to wear that much armor.  Size alone would probably have drawn attention to him, but as it was the other freelancers stopped and stared, some completely forgetting that they were still in my line of fire.  I picked off one who stood up and the others ducked back behind the barricade.  That featureless black head turned towards me and I knew he was sizing me up with whatever visual sensors he had.  The plating of this armor shielded the joints, so I just shot the helmet, a concussive shot, right between the eyes.  Only the echoing sound told me I hit.  The black-armored mercenary had no shields.  He didn’t need them.  I don’t think the shot had fazed him in the least.  I pulled back behind the wall, taking cover while I reloaded.  The sensors were the weakness of that armor.  If I could somehow knock them out, he’d be blind as a bat.  I had no idea what a bat was, but the analogy made sense either way.  Maybe I could neutralize him if that happened.  Either way, I wasn’t giving up.  

“You finish up what you have to do there, and then you come on home to Palaven.  We have a lot to sort out.”  

“Yeah, we do.”  A metallic clank told me the mercenary was on the bridge.  He worked through intimidation, that much was obvious.  I heard every step he took as he crossed, the only one walking because he knew he was invulnerable.  I picked off the running mercenaries around him, knowing I couldn’t take him out at range anyway.  My only chance was to hope I could blind him once he got close enough.  If he got close enough.  He carried his weapons on his back, barely visible beneath two wing-like plates of metal.  One looked like a sniper rifle.  If this guy was a sniper, I’d have better luck breaking his gun than killing him.  

I didn’t want to end the conversation, but the alternative was letting my father hear me die and that seemed worse.  

“Garrus?  Are you still there?”  I could hear how worried he was.  I didn’t hear him worry often.  

“Yeah.”  Another burst of gunfire nearly drowned me out, as did my answering shot, which killed the gunman.  Someone cried out somewhere in the base below me.  

...Maybe a vorcha had gotten inordinately stupid?  “I’m still here.” I answered my father’s unspoken question.  I had no allies.  And that had sounded like a dying scream.  Had the mercenaries finally turned on each other?

The black-armored man had to be inside by now, and even if he was the one killing his allies, it didn’t help me because I still had slim odds of stopping him.  

He was inside.  He was more than inside.  I heard the heavy clanking of his steps up the stairs and along the hallway.  I moved closer to the door.  It wouldn’t matter if I kept other mercenaries out if I couldn’t disable this one.  

When the door opened, it was obvious that he didn’t plan to fight me at range.  He held a long black dagger shaped like a talon, one side gleaming silver in a way that looked as if it had been somehow enhanced.  The dagger and most of his armor were already covered in blood.  I guess I knew who’d been killing mercs downstairs.  It conjured up a memory I didn’t bother to place, it seemed more important that I focus on the fight.  I had expected him to shoot, at least until he could charge, but now I wasn’t sure I’d have time to overload his armor.  I had to try.  

I’d forgotten, for a moment, that I still had the comm link open.  While the black-armored mercenary stepped through the doorway, gunfire had paused (probably because I was no longer a visible target), and the whole place became nearly silent except for his deafening steps.  When the relative silence continued for several seconds as the mercenary inexplicably hesitated, knife held ready but low, my father had to check if I was still alive.  He spoke more quietly than I expected, almost whispering, but over the comm link, it sounded loud.  

“Garrus?”  I know he was afraid that he wouldn’t get an answer and I had no idea what to say, but the effect on the mercenary was what really surprised me.  

“Garrus?”  The black shield of the helmet tilted to the side, the most expressive gesture that could be made in that armor.  The voice was unrecognizable, filtered through speakers buried somewhere in that collar of steel plates.  It sounded more like a VI than anyone I might recognize.  “Garrus _Vakarian_?”  With that reverberating tone, the words lost any emotion they might have had, so I assumed the worst.  

“If I arrested you on the Citadel, you sure as hell didn’t learn your lesson.”  I’d have shot him to punctuate my statement if I’d thought that it would do any good.  The only krogan I knew was Wrex and I couldn’t come up with any plausible reason he might have ended up out here after heading back to Tuchanka.  From what I heard, he had a good life there now.  

The unknown mercenary shook some combination of his head and shoulders, maybe shrugging, maybe just shaking his head, I couldn’t tell with his armor.  Through the speakers, I only caught half of whatever he muttered under his breath, but he was obviously swearing.  

My father apparently caught about as much.  “Son, whoever this is, I hope he’s swearing because you shot him.”

I would have used that chance to fry the mercenary’s sensors except that, instead of attacking or even moving closer, he just paced in what seemed like frustration and reholstered his knife.  

“I’ll call you back, dad.”  I ended the call as the mercenary stepped back until he wouldn’t be visible to any snipers outside and took off his helmet.  I expected that to clear things up, but it raised a lot more questions than it answered.  I found myself looking at what seemed to be a human woman except her dark skin had an almost scaly look and her black hair, which had been cut short and was now very matted, had jagged rosettes of red and blonde.  Still more strange, her glowing irises had slit pupils and looked more krogan than human.  

“...what exactly are you?”

“Good question.”  She shook her hair out of her eyes as I switched my gun back into both hands.  “Unfortunately, that’s a long story.”  Whoever she was, whatever she was, she didn’t seem hostile.  She nodded at me.  “You’ve been here for days, haven’t you?  You know where the tunnels— No, that won’t work.”  She paced some more, the armor looking ridiculously oversized around her human-ish face.  It had to be mechanized or something.  Unless she was more krogan than she seemed.  “Fuck.”  Looking out the window where I guess the mercenaries were trying to determine what had happened to me, the hybrid scowled, apparently making a decision.  She dug into the armor on her back and pulled out a black container.  “You stopped watching the bridge a few minutes ago, you just paused to chat or are you low on thermal clips?”  She assumed the latter, opening the case she’d been carrying between the plates of her armor to pass me a few.  I got up carefully as I picked them up.  “Thanks.  You cleared out the first floor?  No offense, but I still have no idea how you know me.  Beyond my reputation.”  

She managed a grin that vanished almost instantly.  “Your reputation as Archangel or as Garrus?  I look very different than I used to, but I can fix that.”  She watched the bridge warily and over the space of a few seconds, her appearance completely changed.  Her face bulged forward into a beak and what had been hair shed and was immediately replaced by metallic plates.  She wasn’t missing half her crest as she had been when I’d last seen her.  

Her gaze flicked to me briefly as she put her helmet back on.  “They’ll be sending in scouts soon.  If Jaroth has a say in that, he’ll use his mechs.  Do what you can without getting shot and I’ll keep them out of this room.  You aren’t injured, are you?”  Even through the speakers, I recognized that matter-of-fact tone from the last time we’d been in a situation like this.  I guess she was still a mercenary, though I couldn’t begin to guess what had driven her to help me, I wasn’t complaining.  I wonder if this was how she’d felt when I’d showed up back then.  

“I’m fine, Phoenix.  Tired, but fine.  And that sounds like him.  You know the salarian bastard?”

She walked over to overlook the first floor while she took out her gun.  

*       *       *

“Yes.”  I was glad he couldn’t hear how sadly I said that through the speakers of my armor.  “If...”  I trailed off.  I couldn’t tell him to kill Jaroth or any chance that my friend might somehow survive vanished completely.  I hated the fact that I was in this situation.  I hated that I had to condemn either of them, but I agreed with Garrus morally and even if Jaroth got out of here alive, he would still be in danger.  

I hadn’t really made up my mind until I’d reached this room.  I’d gone in because, whatever I decided, it was better that I do this than tell Jaroth to his face that I refused to help him.  As unstable as he was right now, that would probably have forced me to kill him myself, while surrounded by his men and mechs.  Although I can’t say that it didn’t appeal to me to delay any confrontation as much as possible.  Killing the mercs downstairs hadn’t been a decision either; if they were Blue Suns or Blood Pack (which hardly any were,) killing them would help Jaroth if he made it out alive, and if they were freelancers I was just eliminating competition.  The Eclipse team had been setting up a bomb, a bomb we wouldn’t need if I killed Archangel and a bomb that would be a problem if I didn’t.  Killing them and disabling it had been a simple survival necessity.  

I only really needed to decide once I opened the door and faced him down.  And when I did, Garrus Vakarian was damn near the last person I expected to find.  When I’d last seen him, he’d been a rookie, dangerously distracted even if he had proved more capable later on.  I’d known he had more potential than he realized back then, but with his resignation to life as just another C-Sec officer, I hadn’t expected his idealism to bring him anything better.  But he’d tried.  He’d managed more than he gave himself credit for, I knew that from finding him holding out surrounded by three cooperating mercenary gangs as much as I did from recognizing his name on the new reports about Sovereign.  People didn’t just go back to normal lives after that kind of mission, I should have realized who I was dealing with sooner.  I don’t know what I could have done differently.  

I could have helped Garrus, maybe, when Archangel was a new name on Omega, and maybe his people would have survived or at least been more difficult to kill, and Jaroth would have had my betrayal as well as his brother’s murder making him unstable in this fight.  It didn’t merit contemplation right now.  

Even if I hadn’t known Garrus before, meeting him here, so resigned to his fate and still fighting, talking to his father to write old wrongs and maybe mend a relationship, and blaming himself for everything that had happened to his team, I couldn’t have killed him.  No, I don’t think this was ever going to end any other way.  

“Jaroth, you fucking bastard, why didn’t you ever read Melville?”  I muttered it pretty quietly, but glanced across the room to see Garrus looking confused, so he must have heard.  

“Melville?”

“Never mind.”  He shrugged and returned his focus to the bridge, taking a few shots at something.  

“You were right, Eclipse is sending in mechs.”  

My snarled curses probably seemed more hostile than that warranted.  He was too busy shooting to comment, although he warned me that a few mechs and mercs made it past him.  They thought they were still dealing with one man.  None of them saw my shots coming.  

Under normal circumstances, my telepathy had a range of maybe twenty feet, if that, but it was more like hearing than reading a book.  I could feel minds clearly within that range, beyond it most minds just formed a blur, a collective vibe from everyone in the area, but people I knew stuck out for a bit farther.  I ignored it as much as possible in combat so I couldn’t empathize with the people I had to kill and that was how I hadn’t noticed Garrus until I’d seen him, though having known him years ago made it even less possible to attack him once I could feel his mind.  I’d never sensed anyone beyond four hundred feet, however well I knew them, but I could recognize people I knew, especially when they felt strong emotions, from over a hundred feet away.  And Jaroth was sure as hell feeling strong emotions.  He must have been just beyond the nearest barricade at this point and I felt his fury when he realized his attack had failed.  I could also feel that his pain had nearly doubled.  He thought I was dead.  I hadn’t expected him to think that, although it made perfect sense.  I had thought this through less than I realized; whatever his suspicion, he thought it more likely that I had died than betrayed him.  I didn’t have the heart to show myself and prove him wrong.  

“They’re bringing in the heavy mech!” Garrus warned me.  That wasn’t surprising.  It probably came with another wave of Eclipse mercs, who wouldn’t last long.  This didn’t worry me nearly as much as the certainty of what Jaroth would do when this last wave failed.  

“Take down the mech.  I’ve got the rest.”

The mech was down more quickly than I’d expected.  At this point, I felt like this fight was going much too quickly, careening wildly towards a bitter end, leaving blood and destruction in its wake.  

“Fuck.”  I focused down the scope, killing mechs and mercs as robotically as possible and trying not to think about what I was doing.  I didn’t like to run with Eclipse, but I had done so, I knew a few of the men.  By now they were mostly higher-ranking operatives, Jaroth’s best men, guys I’d saved, beat at cards, or at least spoken to.  I felt their horror as they recognized me in the instant before their minds flashed with pain and went dark.  If I could have closed my eyes or plugged my ears to turn off my telepathy, I would have.  “ _Fuck_.”  A pause in gunfire from across the room suggested that Garrus had glanced back at me to see why I’d sworn.  “I’ll tell you if I’m hit, Garrus, just keep shooting.”  

“Right.”  I got the sense from his tone that he felt a little concerned by my seemingly random swearing, like he thought I was wounded or sick and just wouldn’t tell him.  As desperate as he was, an ally who’d collapse unexpectedly could be less than helpful; I understood his concern.  He didn’t trust me in general and he didn’t trust what I’d just said, but right now he had no choice but to take me at my word.  He couldn’t watch both sides on his own.  

Some kind of subtle alarm went off and Garrus checked his omni-tool.  “Shit, they’re coming in through the tunnels.”  Eclipse had never really let up after the heavy mech, Garrus just had the remaining mercenaries pinned down on the bridge.  He hadn’t looked away from the bridge except to check the alarm and even doing that had necessitated half a dozen shots to get them pinned down again.  Most were probably dead, although I tried not to think about it, but at least one person remained alive, keeping Garrus focused on the bridge and remaining a potential threat.  I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.  

With the mercs to deal with, Garrus couldn’t handle the tunnels himself, so I got up.  “I’ll take care of it.  They’re in the basement, right?  We can keep in touch by comm channel, I’ll turn on the link in my helmet.”  He accepted that, nodding.  Between my armor, my focus on melee combat, and that fact that he’d been at this for days made me the obvious choice, even if I couldn’t run to head them off.  There was only one path up here and as long as I could handle the numbers they could field, it didn’t matter how slowly I moved.  

“Thanks.  There are emergency shutters that can seal off the tunnels, close them and we can focus on the bridge.”  

I headed off.  Walking through the first floor was the worst part of the task.  The floor was littered with bodies, some Blue Suns, some Blood Pack, some Eclipse, as well as a few freelancers and the covered corpses I guessed belonged to Garrus’ team.  They’d died or been killed and he felt responsible, that was all I knew.  Jaroth hadn’t mentioned them and if we lived long enough, I’d ask Garrus about it.  The idea of lost lives being so insignificant bothered me more than I liked to admit, likewise I hated the relief when I saw that at least none of the bodies in here were Jaroth.  The Blood Pack was a welcome distraction.  

The complexity of my own emotions reflected that of those around me, for some reason.  It was part of why I liked krogan so much when life was hard.  They weren’t stupid, but they kept things simple.  It was kill or be killed, fight, drink, and die.  There was no questioning the way life worked, no guilt for killing the enemy, no wondering if there was a better life out there somewhere or if there was no point looking for one.  Krogan kept life simple.  

Fighting the Blood Pack was _very_ simple.  Whether they recognized me or mistook me for an unarmed krogan, they didn’t bother with complicated strategy.  They charged.  Warren ran at me to bite and I beat them down.  Krogan shot a few times and then charged at me, and I beat them down.  Vorcha shot and kept shooting, or ran at me with flamethrowers, or tried to keep walls and boxes between us and sooner or later I cornered them and beat them down.  There was no finesse to my assault; I didn’t need or want any strategy.  Aside from the flamethrowers, nothing they did could get through my armor and they weren’t worth wasting my thermal clips.  I barely bothered to use my knife, killing most of them just with kicks and punches.  Between my strength and the weight of my armored body, even krogan physiology couldn’t keep them alive.  Although my anatomical knowledge probably helped: Krogan only had one brain.  

The Blood Pack had been a morbidly appropriate name; walking back up to Garrus, the blood covering my armor turned it from black to a dark reddish-orange.  Even if it hadn’t been the intention of the design, I probably looked terrifying.  

“Garrus, the shutters are closed,” I reported, realizing the turian hadn’t said anything since he’d given me directions.  Reaching the main floor, it was instantly obvious why.  

I emerged into hoard of Blood Pack mercs, including their leader, Garm.  Judging from the blasted remains of a door behind them, they’d just gotten inside.  Garm led the pack both literally and figuratively.  He’d hired me once.  I was half the reason he didn’t bother with freelancers, I’d quit because I wouldn’t shake down civilians even if the pay was good, which it wasn’t.  My replacement had gotten himself killed on his first job.  The blood covering my armor was obviously from his men, and the vorcha could probably smell that even more clearly.  Half of them stepped back.  Whatever their potential for rage, I hunted in my armor, and the vorcha had heard enough stories to recognize that I was most of the reason their numbers never got too high on Omega.  I’m pretty sure Aria had also figured that out and that was why she didn’t bother me.  To her, I was the ship’s cat, not too friendly, but I kept the vermin down.  And vorcha were cowards, even Blood Pack vorcha.  Usually fear of their leader outweighed any external threat, but right now I shifted that balance.  That was why I never respected the Blood Pack, half their force fled from me like the rats they were.  

Half the vorcha were shot by their allies before they got out the doors and a few weren’t killed by their wounds.  Some screamed about cannibals, probably the longest word in their vocabulary, some yelled about monsters in the night, and others gave the much clearer explanation of “smart predator” while pointing at me.  Apparently, the krogan hadn’t put it together until then.  Other races might have been horrified or just disgusted.  The krogan laughed except for Garm, who glared at me and pointed.  “The vorcha are _my_ men.”

I snorted.  “And you’ll eat them yourself if you want to?”  I didn’t like eating vorcha.  I didn’t like eating any sentient beings, not that I made a habit of it, and the taste was horrible to say the least.  I only ate vorcha when I was desperate, I mostly hunted them as a public service.  I’d eaten a few when I got desperate, but I didn’t hunt to eat, I killed them so they wouldn’t kill other people, and I only ate ones I’d already killed when I had nothing else to eat.  It had started out of desperation, when I first arrived on Omega, and now it only continued as an intimidation tactic.  I needed to eat anyway.  

Garm didn’t take kindly to my joke.  With a bellow of rage, he charged at me and the rest of his men prepared to fire, unwilling to shoot yet for fear of hitting their boss.  I hoped they were just forgetting about Garrus in the heat of the moment and not focusing on me because they knew he’d been killed.  I faced Garm’s charge head on, grabbing him when he rammed me and using his own momentum and the fact that my magnetized boots had better traction to topple him onto the floor.  In heavy armor, most krogans had some trouble getting back to their feet and Garm was no exception, I took advantage of that fact.  Fighting krogan and vorcha on this particularly shitty day did nothing to inspire honorable tactics, so I didn’t hesitate to simply make use of my incredibly heavy armor and the advantage of having an opponent conveniently below the level of my knees.  I planted one foot on Garm’s back and did nothing more than shift my weight forward.  Aside from the sensors in my visor, my armor was hardly high-tech.  I’d grafted pieces of tungsten and abrative hull plating onto a tight and strong fiber suit, the only reason this wasn’t a type of armor already mass-produced was because the weight of that much metal simply couldn’t be worn by most species.  Even krogan couldn’t function in armor this heavy, although I bet a krogan would have better mobility than a human would have.  My armor alone weighed almost as much as an elcor, and inside, my denser-than-average bones probably left me around the same weight.  I had barely half of it on Garm when his armor collapsed and crushed his rib cage.  He spent a moment gasping and spluttering before he succumbed to his fate.  Too many primary and secondary organs had been destroyed for him to regenerate.  

From the moment I put my foot on their leader, I had stared down the remaining krogan.  Even with my eyeless helmet, they knew that look was a warning.  They were’t stupid.  Krogan as they were, they still were convinced by now that I had them beat and any chance of money or freedom to kill who they wanted wasn’t worth it anymore.  They backed down and left through they door they’d blasted open.  I ignored my urge to challenge them, to call them cowards for backing down and ignoring their krogan heritage, only because I didn’t have the desire to bother with them anymore.  There had been enough killing today.  Besides, I had no idea why Garrus hadn’t answered and I had to keep him safe or this whole thing had been pointless.  If Garrus died, I’d turned on Jaroth for no reason.  If both of them were dead...  Well, if both of them were dead there was no longer any point working as a mercenary or going unnoticed.  If both of them died, I might just take up Archangel’s cause myself.  Or take over Omega’s Eclipse.  

As the blood on my armor dried to a thick orange crust, I thundered up the stairs.  I could feel that Garrus was not alone as soon as I reopened myself to telepathy.  I recognized his mind as effortlessly as I recognized who he was fighting.  Jaroth was alive.  Both men recognized my deafening footsteps and both felt at least some level of hopefulness upon hearing me.  Garrus expected me to help him, although he still wasn’t sure about my motives, while Jaroth hoped I would help him and had merely been knocked out or otherwise unable to aid him sooner, but he wasn’t stupid.  The salarian recognized my fighting style in the corpses downstairs and he knew how easily my loyalty changed.  Even though he had hoped that he would be the exception to that rule, he saw too much evidence against me to bet his life on that.  

My pace was slow because it had to be, drawing out the time they both could ponder my intentions and delay and giving me time to consider my next move.  I drew no weapons.  My actions would have to depend on the situation in the room.  If Garrus was injured or otherwise helpless, I’d need to pretend to help Jaroth until I could incapacitate him, has much as I preferred to be honest.  Likewise, if for some reason Garrus had Jaroth helpless but had not killed him, I was tempted to try and knock my friend out and try to get Garrus to just leave him alive.  That seemed even more difficult to manage.  In the end, I guess it was best that I found them at a stalemate.  

I saw Jaroth immediately, he had cover behind a crate across the room from the door.  Garrus was behind a planter deeper into the room, waiting for a shot at Jaroth that the salarian was trying not to give him.  Garrus was exhausted, after fighting for three days anyone would be, his reflexes weren’t as sharp as usual and he was being cautious right now.  Jaroth knew he only had a heavy pistol against a man with a sniper rifle, but he also knew Garrus was tired.  Jaroth was still the less-skilled of the two, and right now his emotions made him impatient.  If I hadn’t been here, it was obvious who would eventually win.  

Garrus wouldn’t necessarily shoot Jaroth if I started talking to the salarian.  As long as I didn’t seem like his ally, he would presume that I had a plan.  Jaroth would shoot Garrus.  For the time being, I ignored the turian.  Jaroth wouldn’t let me talk him down and I wouldn’t let myself betray him without leaving myself open to his thoughts.  It was better to feel what he was going through than have to wonder how he had felt after the fact.  I didn’t plan to kill him, but accidents happened and Jaroth was desperate.  It was better that I deal with him however things ended than that I force Garrus to kill him and spend the rest of my life wondering if it was necessary.  And probably blaming Garrus more than a little.  I didn’t exactly expect to stick with the turian after this, but the idea wasn’t unappealing, and it was better that I didn’t go into that hating him for being the mechanism of my friend’s death.  It was better that I did this myself.  

I didn’t draw any weapons, but I stepped towards Jaroth, who turned his gun on me without hesitation.  He knew how I worked, he knew I often fought unarmed.  He also knew his pistol would do absolutely nothing to my armor as much as he knew I’d be forced to attack if he used his omnitool to disable me.  He didn’t look forward to fighting me and it wasn’t all because he knew he didn’t stand a chance.  I felt only the faintest twinge of anticipation from him and that was only because he hated that I’d decided to help Archangel.  He hated that I’d betrayed him, but he knew me well enough to understand why it had happened.  He realized now that my morals simply would not allow me to kill the vigilante and he recognized his mistake.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed off that I’d betrayed him, but he still cared about me and if out tactical positions had been reversed he wouldn’t have enjoyed killing me either.  

I sighed,“Oh, I am fortune’s fool.”  The speakers didn’t need to convey my reluctance, it was obvious.  Jaroth recognized the quote.  I felt it in his mind even if he hadn’t frowned just a little more.  

“Shakespeare?  Really?  Fine.”  He was still in cover and he glanced back at Garrus, who hadn’t moved and was still trusting that I had some kind of plan.  Mostly, he was trusting me because he was out of clips.  I hadn’t brought many because I preferred close combat and he’d already used what I had.  I guess it was lucky that Jaroth hadn’t realized that.  

I stopped fairly close to the salarian, but not so close that he felt he had to retaliate.  He let me get closer than most people before he reached that point.  He still feared that Garrus might take advantage of me as a distraction, so he stayed behind cover while I stood almost casually in the open.  The Blue Suns were working double-time to fix their gunship, I could see the frenzy across the way.  They knew I was in here now, helping Archangel, and nothing short of a missile launcher seemed like it could stop me.  I’d have to be quick.  

“If you try to cure evil with evil, you will add more pain to your fate.”  If I spoke plainly, I was afraid I’d break down, and that wouldn’t help anyone; using quotes carried with them the connotation as well as the memories we shared of discussing the works and writers they came from.  

My second quote made him scoff, although there was less humor than spite in his tone.  “A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy.”  I had a quote to answer that, but it wouldn’t help, so I took a different route instead.  I crouched beside him as best as I could in the bulky armor.  

“I am Fate’s lieutenant; I act under orders.”

“Whose orders would that be?”  He knew I served no one but myself and he was pointing it out, breaking my pattern of quotes once again.  

“You know my morals and you knew I’d been trying to stay out of this conflict.  You also knew I could not simply refuse to help you.  Neither of us knew going into this that I’d met Archangel before.”

Jaroth stared.  I stared back.  Several meters away, Garrus cast us a sidelong glance to see why we’d fallen silent.  

“You know him?”

“I saved his life.  I can’t kill him and I don’t want to kill you either, but I will if I have to.”

He glared at me.  

“Men often mistake killing and revenge for justice.  They seldom have the stomach for justice.”  He misunderstood my meaning.  

“Then I’ll kill him myself.  I planned to do that anyway.”  He must have realized that Garrus was out of clips, because he stood and tried to shoot him.  The bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and out the window as I surged forward to grab his arm.  Regardless of my armor and the fact that he was a stronger than average salarian, even using what hand-to-hand techniques he knew, he simply lacked the strength to break free.  Our scuffle lasted no more than two seconds and ended with me holding him against the wall by his wrists, his gun dropped and kicked across the floor.  Part of me wondered if I could safely head-butt him and knock him out that way.  

“Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one, wounds himself with the other.”

Those sinoper eyes narrowed.  “Awfully hypocritical of you, isn’t that?”

“I never said I was oblivious to the suffering I caused.”  I had to agree, I didn’t exactly have the moral high-ground on this one.  

“Fool that I am, I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself.”  With the plating that covered my body, it became difficult to judge exactly how tightly I held him pinned, so I must have erred too far to the side of mercy; he slipped one hand free of my grip and did something on his omnitool.  

Jaroth overloaded the systems of my armor.  The speakers inside the helmet let out a deafening whistle of feedback that felt like an icicle stabbed through my ears as the visual sensors went dark and I was blinded.  While I tore off my helmet, Jaroth dove for his gun and I turned around to find that Garrus had vaulted at least two tables to try and stop him.  

Jaroth got the gun first but had barely turned towards Garrus when the turian hit him with a punch that sent him reeling.  He followed that with an attempted take-down that Jaroth, even as dazed as he was, managed to side-step.  Garrus turned back towards the salarian as Jaroth aimed and shot and my arm, once again, sent the bullet into the ceiling.  The force made him swear and might have broken his arm; he dropped the gun.  Garrus grabbed it off the floor and started to aim but stopped when he saw the way I was watching him.  He narrowed his eyes.  

I think he would have reluctantly let me handle the Eclipse leader, but Jaroth didn’t give him that chance.  Unarmed, the salarian snarled and lunged at Garrus, who raised the pistol instinctively while I tried to block Jaroth.  I raised my arm for an elbow strike to his chest or arms, if he blocked it, meaning to knock him back or at least keep him off Garrus.  My height in these boots threw off my aim, as did the fact that his emotions made him so reckless that he failed to keep his arms high enough to shield his face.  My strike connected with a sickening crack, hitting his head and knocking him backwards.  I misjudged my strength sometimes and this was probably one such occasion.  I might have rendered him unconscious, but I didn’t have a chance to find out.  Jaroth’s hips hit the windowsill and the force of my strike carried him backwards, toppling over it.  Garrus and I dove to look at the same speed, but only because my armor slowed me down.  If I’d had fast enough reflexes, I would have grabbed for Jaroth, maybe caught a hand or his foot, just...something.  Anything.  Any chance to stop his fall.  

I didn’t even see him hit the ground because that was when the Blue Suns got their gunship working again.  Garrus dove for cover and I was forced to turn around and shield my head in the heavy plates of my neck guard.  The barrage of artillery felt like a nightmare and I barely registered the grenades I started throwing at it or the wash of heat over my skin when they exploded so close to me.  Garrus was shooting as well, but I didn’t realize that until he stopped.  The room came back into focus very slowly.  The gunship had circled around trying to get a clear shot while I stayed in cover.  I didn’t know how long I’d sat there and I couldn’t remember the last few minutes.  I don’t know if I’d just kept throwing grenades until I ran out or if I’d given some to Garrus and focused on the men who’d been coming in while the gunship harried us.  In the relative silence, I got the feeling that the gunship was the only thing left.  My face had changed, although I hadn’t intended to change it.  If Jaroth had known I could shapechange, he would have asked me to use that against Garrus, the realization came unbidden and with it the image of myself, reaching into the turian mind to take the form of a fresh wound, one of his men, or maybe his father, and wearing that form to break him before letting my friend have more physical vengeance.  

My form now was nothing almost anyone would recognize.  I stared blankly at the planter ahead of me, my vision keen but irrelevant compared to my other senses.  My hair would cover my eyes if the tight-fitting collar of my armor hadn’t kept it pulled back along my neck.  The focus on other senses was helpful, maybe that was why I’d changed form.  Right now I could pinpoint the gunship without seeing it, focusing on the constant hum of the engines and using them to track it.  I had ears, but I sensed the sound more strongly through the curved horns that arched back from my skull, channelling the vibrations through my skull as much as detecting them through an array of specialized nerve fibers within the bony prongs.  My smaller secondary horns were actually resonating chambers used for communication and producing the frequencies I used to echolocate when ordinary sight was not possible.  Once I recovered from my daze, I knew there were no surviving enemies except the gunner and pilot of the gunship, but instinct still drove me to open my nasal passages and scent the air.  Adapted to track clean and healthy individuals through meters of snow, this base, after everything that had happened here, assaulted my olfactory system the way a ghost-pepper, coffee ground, peppermint, and wasabi mixture would assault human taste-buds.  Seven explosive sneezes brought me enough relief to analyze the information of one sniff with watering eyes.  

Traces of food, waste, and hundreds of kinds of ammunition could be instantly dismissed as could the overwhelming reek of exhaust that always filled Omega.  I could taste the tungsten alloy and black paint of my armor, as well as the blood that still covered it.  My predatory instincts focused on the scents of blood above all else once I adapted to the assault on my sinuses.  Vorcha smelled the strongest, followed by krogan only because I was covered in that.  Only a few salarians had died and I had spent enough time around Jaroth to recognize his blood amid the chaos.  It wasn’t the only blood scent I recognized.  

Garrus had been hit.  Maybe he’d been hit before, I didn’t know.  Maybe he’d been hit when I’d first seen him here as Archangel, but this blood smelled fresh.  And close.  There was so much, so close to me, that I could taste it, which stirred my carnivorous nature despite myself, and I forced it back down.  I was hungry again, hungrier than usual.  If there had been a vorcha nearby that problem would already be solved.  The instinct was powerful, but I could control it, I had to.  I focused instead on tracing the scent, standing from cover to investigate.  

It didn’t take long to find him.  

Garrus lay sprawled in the middle of the floor.  From the look of it, he’d been hit with a missile and between the pool of blue blood that surrounded him and the damage I could see to his face and armor, I thought he was dead until I sensed his mind.  His thoughts were vague and sluggish, he barely knew where he was, but he was alive.  I grabbed his chin as gently as I could to turn his face and see if there was anything I could do right now to help.  Nope.  He needed medical attention.  Fast.  

A missile shot past my shoulder and exploded against the far wall, reminding me what had done this.  All the rage and grief and hate I’d been feeling myself as well as the emotions I’d picked up from everyone around me just focused into one blazing, sharp lance, aimed directly at that gunship.  I would take that thing down if I had to claw it apart with my bare hands.  

*       *       *

After I got hit, my memories get pretty fuzzy.  It felt like things went quiet for a long time, but it was probably just a few seconds.  I saw something, some kind of animal, I thought at the time, looking at me.  I must have been hallucinating.  Phoenix or at least I assume it was Phoenix turned my face to the side, probably looking at my wounds, but it hurt a bit and I was too disoriented to think clearly, so I struggled, not that I was coherent enough to break free of that grip.  I think they started shooting at us again, but I just remember loud noise that was drown out by some kind of animal shriek.  I must have passed out after that.  


End file.
